Currently, organic light emitting elements gain attention as thin light emitting materials.
Organic light emitting elements utilizing the electroluminescence (Electro Luminescence: EL) of organic materials (so-called organic EL elements) are thin-film type complete solid elements that can emit light at low voltages of from about several volts to several tens of volts, and have many excellent features such as high luminance, highlight emitting efficiency, thin type and light weight. Therefore, organic light emitting elements have gained attention in recent years as backlights for various displays, display plates such as signboards and emergency lights, and surface light emitters such as illumination light sources.
Such organic EL elements each has a constitution in which a light emitting layer formed of an organic material is disposed between two electrodes, and the emitted light that has been generated in the light emitting layer passes through the electrodes and is extracted outside. Therefore, at least one of the two electrodes is constituted as a transparent electrode, and the emitted light is extracted from the side of the transparent electrode. Furthermore, the organic EL elements can give a high luminance at a low electrical power, and thus are excellent in visibility, response velocity, lifetime and consumed electrical power.
Meanwhile, in such organic EL elements, a patterning method in which a non-light-emitting region is formed by irradiating an organic functional layer stacked on a glass substrate with ultraviolet ray to allow the irradiated part to deteriorate has been provided (for example, see Patent Literature 1).
However, in the case when an organic EL element is constituted by stacking a pair of electrodes and an organic functional layer, and the like on a resin substrate, if patterning is conducted by irradiating the organic functional layer with ultraviolet ray (for example, see Patent Literature 2), the resin substrate is also irradiated with the ultraviolet ray, and thus a phenomenon in which the color of the resin substrate is changed into yellow occurs. Therefore, it is necessary to shorten the time for irradiating the organic functional layer with the ultraviolet ray, and thus it is impossible to form a non-light-emitting region in which the light emission of the organic functional layer has been sufficiently lost.